'90 Bronco II, manual transmission and hubs. No serious issues I can remember.

'95 Contour GL, 2.0/5spd. Pipe attached to the catalytic converter went a couple times, and alternator replaced at 99k.

'97 Mystique GS, 2.0/auto. Constant vibration when idling in Drive, enough to shake the change in the dashboard cubby. Rear struts on their way out at 85k.

'01 Sable, Vulcan 3.0/column-shift. Fine as far as I can remember. (My grandfather never mentioned any major repairs.)

'03 Sable, Duratec/floor-shift. Just fixed a sensor issue at 102k, nothing else of note.

So, five Fords from the last 20 years, only one with a real pain-in-the-ass quality problem, and that can be solved by throwing 'er in Neutral.

I have no complaints.

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Quite possibly.

They just did a rather impressive job of beating Toyota at its own game with this one.

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I think that you misunderstand what I was attempting to say. I did not imply that standard Fusions were as bland as Camcords. And yes, I have driven one. I cannot deny that they are much more pleasant to drive than the Camry. But when you are creating a hybrid car to maximize mileage, a fair degree of driving enjoyment goes right out the window.

The gearing gets much taller, the suspension gets softer, you get low rolling resistance (and correspondingly low grip) tires, and so on. So regardless of how the standard Fusion drives, the Hybrid version will feel like an energy-efficient appliance. Just like the Malibu Hybrid, the Aura Green Line, and the Camry Hybrid.

That's not to say that that is a bad thing, nor did I make any such implication. But the fact is that the Hybrid versions of any car are far more appliance-like than their gas-powered counterparts.

So, yes, somebody tell Toyota that they just got beat at their own game, and let's see if they come up with a Porsche-style complaint about the tires Ford used.

And as far as hybird, appliance-like cars go, according to all the reviews that I have read here and elsewhere, the Fusion is a pretty damned impressive piece.

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There is a reason Americans prefer Toyota over Ford. When you buy a Camry, you can be reasonably assured that now only will you still be driving it ten years from now, it will still run nearly like it did the day you bought it. You can have this assurance with consistency; it doesn't matter what day of the week it was built or what country it was built in (my son's Focus was built in Mexico, and it shows). Can you say that about any Ford product produced over the last, well, forever?

I want to know a couple of things when I buy a car:

1. How many recalls will I have to endure in the first couple of years? In other words, are they, yet again, foisting a beta version of the product on the public, knowing they'll buy it because it's an "American" car?

2. How often will I be calling the tow truck to come get the car because some nitnoid gizmo broke on it (again) causing it to be undriveable?

3. How often will I be scrubbing oil/coolant/transmission fluid stains off the floor of my garage?

That's just for starters. Ford, while I admire their ability to run their business somewhat better than GM, doesn't have a very good track record in this respect. Businessmen don't design cars, engineers do. Businessmen just stand over the engineers saying, "we need this NOW," and that's a hell of a way to produce something that costs upwards of twenty grand and is expected to last at least a decade. So they put out shoddy product that has to go back to the shop repeatedly, wears out prematurely, and seems to be deliberately designed to fall apart just when you've made the last payment.

So no, I will not be an early adopter of this particular piece of technology. I want you to go first and tell me in a few years how your Ford is doing. Until then, I'll be happy driving my Japanese car (made in Japan, not Dixie).

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The game should be pretty obvious based on the title of the thread, but just in case here it is: producing the best fuel-efficient midsize for mass consumption.

Ford Fusion Hybrid > Toyota Camry Hybrid.

Now to address your other points:

1) I own a Saturn. Ten years later it's still running well. I have had to take it in for precisely ZERO recalls. The latest generation of Toyota Camry has had three recalls in the past two years. The Fusion has had four. While you could certainly argue that four is greater than three, I bet if you went through and ran the T-test statistical analysis, you would find that there probably isn't a significant difference there.

2) Build quality? Go and drive an old Toyota from the seventies and eighties. Say, a Celica or pick-up from that era.The long-term historic quality gap suddenly won't seem quite so big. There are more seventies/80's Ford pick-ups and Mustangs on the road than any of their contemporaries. When was the last time you could say that about Toyota in the history of, well, ever?

3)Japanese cars are second only to German cars for their notoriety of having unreliable "nitnoid gizmos" to break. Case in point? Early (and even the current) Lexus LS, Acura RL/Legend, and, ummm, most Infinitis.

4)If you haven't figured out that small oil/fluid leaks occur from ALL cars when they have been stationary, and that you ought to but an oil pan underneath your car in the garage to prevent having it stain into the concrete, you clearly aren't a mechanically-inclined car guy.

That's just for starters. While there is this common perception of quality reputation for both foreign and domestic automakers that have understandably developed, the difference is not anywhere near as extreme as people tend to think. The Toyotas and Hondas of old really were not great cars. They were just slightly better than most domestics of the time, and then the fallibility of public group think suddenly elevated Toyota to God-like status. And you are precisely correct, engineers design cars, not businessmen. The business men are the ones that tell the engineers what cars they can design, build, and sell. Note that the Mark IV Supra didn't have much a shelf life.

As far as your son's focus, I am sorry that you have had such a bad experience, and I can empathize with you on that one. But don't sit here and say that just because your experience was bad that everyone else's experience was bad.

The point of this article is not to sit here and judge based off of what once was. It is to judge based off of what is. And here's what is: the new Ford Fusion Hybrid beat the pants off the Toyota Camry Hybrid. Deal with it.

So yes, I will be an early applauder and quite possibly an early adopter of this particular piece of technology. And while you are cruising around in your good car, I will be cruising around in my better car, because I am not one to scorn a good piece of technology and a good product simply due to the name on the box it came it.

And here is the list of towns called "Dixie" in the United States:

Dixie, Florida

Nope, my Saturn wasn't Saturn wasn't built there, either.

So now that we are done trading wiseass cracks and getting into yet another my-penis-is-bigger-than-yours argument, let's enjoy the articles posted here for what they are meant to be: news of exciting things happening in the automotive industry and judge them for what they are, not for what our irrelevant past experiences have been.

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